Animoto

Enhance your digital classroom with Animoto, the perfect tool for creating videos and presentations. It takes just minutes to create a video which can bring your lessons to life.

Educators can apply for a free Animoto Plus account to use in the classroom.


List serve ideas for using animoto:

The following are ideas for using Animoto within the classroom:
 
 
1.    I use it to make book trailers.  The language arts teachers have used it to display six-word memoirs their students write.  They have the students each make a PowerPoint slide (and then convert those to .jpg files) with the six words they've chosen and a picture to represent their memoir.  The teachers create one Animoto video per class because of the limitation on song length.  Hope that makes sense.
 
 
 
2.       Our teachers are using Animoto (grade 9 and 10) to do book trailers in English.  A Health teacher (9 grade) used it to do public service announcements for different drug use.  A Physic's team (grade 9) is talking about using it to explain the different possibilities for alternative energy choices.
 
 
 
3.       The 9th grade English teacher and I just did a collaboration where the students did 30 second book trailers for their recreational reading books. The kids loved it, and got really into it, and the principal came down for a whole period to watch the finished products. Definitely something we will do again.
 
4.        I started using it in persuasive writing.  A 5th grade teacher asked me for help and I suggested taking their writing and turning it into an Animoto movie.  They had written to their parents asking for a pet.  We condensed their arguments into 7 ppt slides (1 title slide, 3 slides for their points, 3 for parent responses)  They LOVED it!  As they finished, we had film screenings in the library and we practiced reflective critiques.  Every subsequent round of films improved.  I asked the first kids who finished if they wanted to try a book trailer.  I have a child who has poor fine motor skills, but is really creative.  He was the first to finish his.  He went home and set up his own account.  He wanted to make a trailer for "Holes."  I helped with his grammar and punctuation editing, but everything else was his.   [[@http://animoto.com/play/PC7z5alTpDmg7AzEKOQbFw?utm_content=challenger]]  Now, everyone wants to do it. My 4th and 5th graders are really beginning to improve their synthesis skills by doing this.  Since they are so excited about it, I am really sticking to my guns about having them cite the sources for their pictures.  That has always been a battle (both for students and teachers).  I told them if we want to post the trailers to our catalog so other students can see them, we have to demonstrate ethical use of the images. When you have 5th grade boys who don't want to stop for lunch because they want to finish their movie, I figure you must be on to something!  I am working on building a library of book trailers for our catalog.  I'd like to submit some to Book Trailers for All.  Teachers are coming to me asking if I can show them other neat processes.  This has been a great adventure.
 
  1.  Preview a lesson, "hype it"
 
6.      "Advertising" a field trip or event
 
  1.  Student projects: theme, tone, mood, symbolism, conflict, point of view
  2.  Persuasive visual essays
  3.  Visual narratives
  4.  PSA's
  5.  Scrapbook or yearbook retrospective
  6.  Reports: work experience placement, presentation of cultural study of country, state reports
  7.  Music class: visuals to fit the musical style/composition being studied